One of my grandmothers (on my birth mother's tree) was a McTear and I have, so far, traced the McTears back to my 3 x great grandfather James McTear who was born in Ireland about 1814. Purely because one of their children married someone who had connections to Banbridge near Seapatrick in County Down, it is possible that they may have come from there, although this is just conjecture.

James came over to Scotland with his Irish wife, Agness, before the birth of their first child who was born in Glenluce, Wigtownshire, Scotland in 1839. They emigrated just before the Irish Potato Famine which was between 1845 and 1850. The prime purpose was almost certainly to find agricultural work.Why choose Wigtownshire ? The answer is that because a lot of the Irish immigrants were poor, they tended to stay where the ship took them and therefore the west coast of Scotland, particularly Wigtownshire, was heavily populated by the Irish.

Census show that James was an agricultural labourer and his wife a sower of muslin.

They had 4 sons and 3 daughters, with the youngest daughter, also named Agnes (with one 's'), born in 1857 when Agness was about 43 years old. Apart from the first child, all the other children were born in Kirkinner, Wigtownshire.

They certainly moved around over their lifetime, but always within about a twenty mile radius. They were probably not able to write their names as the spellings on the various census made them tough to trace and the variations suggest they may have had a strong accent :